Reflexes: I Can Has!

Yes my dear, this is another one of those "Oh I got ganked while being flagged for PVP but redeemed myself stories". Let's see, let us start at the very beginning just to lay out all the little details.

I have been patrolling Scholazar Basin occasionally in hopes of taming the Green Devilsaur King Krush. To this very day I have not even seen him being tamed or killed. Anyways, I come prepared everytime I do my loop around the basin for a potential tame so I have my pet unsummoned, and because I'm just flying around in a low level zone I have a Random Beautiful Useless Weapon equipped just for its Beauty. I have a large collection of such random weird weapons, mostly from BC Heroics. Anyways..my King Krush hunt was a failure so I decided to do something that would guarantee me an actual "something". So I went to go mine some Elementium over in Twilight Highlands and perhaps make a loop to look for Karoma. If all else fails I will at least have a few Elementium Ores in my bag just for them being there. I have no use for them.

I was also in the process of "catching up" my achievements to my once-main character and I saw that Pest Control was only missing a single [Mouse]. Luckily, Twilight Highlands is right beside Wetlands, and said [Mice] are known to reside within Menethil Harbor, an Alliance Town.

I fly over, inevitably get flagged, kill mouse, return to mining.

Now things start getting hectic. I re-entered the zone starting at where that valley leads into Grim Batol. My gatherer states that there are many nodes on either sides of the valley so I fly low and try to scan each of the nodes. I get shot at!

"Oh crap it's another hunter who hates me!", I think to myself. I mouse over the agressor and realize it was only one of the combatant NPCs in the valley.  Phew.

I scan a node further up north of the valley and swoop down to gather it. As I am mining this node a DK or Paladin also flies in but it was too late for him. I had won. He was also horde but in my mind I was thinking "Damn, if he had been Alliance he'd probably try to kill me, I mean...I would try to kill me!"

I continue northbound through the valley and spot a Rich Node. I land and begin to mine. Before my mining action completes I get stunned by something. It was like I had been sapped by a rogue. I then see popping out of the shadows an NPC who is now hacking away at me. I stand there confused thinking "ok did that previous horde just jump on his Ally to kill me? No...", then I thought "Oh wait did those NPCs from earlier follow me? But I don't remember there being any rogues?" Then I thought "did he just Shadowmeld by this node WAITING for someone to show up? How rude!"

I was so confused. I stood there half waiting to die as I was so accustomed to on my Warlock, I mean "once you were stunned it was practically over", chimed a little bitter voice. I then moused over on this "person" and saw something Night Elf Warrior. Hmm....wait. A warrior is not a rogue. A rogue would have burst me down. I look back up at my Health Bar: 75%. Wait. A warrior? ALL UP IN MY MELEE? THIS IS DIRTY BUSINESS! Warriors grunt and drool and AUUGH!!

I clicked on my pet bar and summoned out a random pet (luckily it was a spirit beast who could heal) and I did everything I could muster up in that moment of shock to get him out of my comfort zone. My natural reaction was to Wing Clip, Intimidate, then Disengate right after he charges. It was only a matter of seconds until he charged and hamstringed me but with Bestial Wrath and the new Kill Command I had managed to burst him down faster than he could kill me while also throwing out a heal to myself. I even TAZED him and threw out a completely useless Distracting Shot in my confusion because he was attacking my pet because I still had this half-thought thinking he was some obscure NPC out to prevent me from acquiring Elementium.

It was over. I walked back over to claim my five elementium ores and flew off never to see that warrior again.

Now the question is: Do you kill the pet who does more damage than its master in short fights while risking the hunter's CCs or try to kill the hunter while igoring the insanely hard hitting pet? I say he should have tried to Warrior Fear the pet away, which I would then use Bestial Wrath to cancel it out? Who knows!

Turby the Hunter

Build a Daily: Solo Slabhide



Torby goes toe-to-toe with Slabhide!

 What better way to get your grubby hands on the Vitreous Stone Drake than to just waltz into Stonecore and pick it up for yourself? There are tons of videos and useful guides on how to solo your way (as a hunter) up to Slabhide by bypassing Corborus (poor neglected stack of tires), but since I'm talking about it I might as well provide some information in my usual non-comprehensive fashion!

The Map


"ohai gusy i'm Stonecore LOL"

 Provided above is the region of interest within Stonecore. You will see the entrance depicted as the beautiful little swirl on the southern end of the map. This is essentially the "difficult" part of the solo adventure. See the three pristinely colored boxes on the map? Those are the bad bad enemies we all love to hate. At the red box you will see Millhouse Manastorm standing with some scary looking mobs. They hates you! The ultimate goal is to push Millhouse back, way back all the way to where the Skull is, or where Corborus shows up. Why? Because the path to Slabhide is blocked, and only Corborus can smash down the wall blocking the way!

What I did was Camouflage past the Red and Green groups, and went directly to murder the Yellow group. I like to save the Red for last. I was in Survivaul mode due to the extra CC brought upon by Wyvern Sting. I prefer to Ice Trap the Berserkers because they get all up in my melee range and that makes me really uncomfortable as a hunter and it brings back a lot of PVP nightmares. I would then Wyvern Sting either the other Berserker or Warbringer and proceed to burst down the Earth Shaper because of its annoying Dust Storm attack. Use a scatter shot to interrupt the Earth Shaper's transformation. Another note of "CC" is that when the Warbringers enrage, you can Tranquilizing Shot them, a shot I found to have a lot more uses than back in Wrath. The Yellow group is pretty simple to take out.

Now as of patch 4.0.6 I've noticed a slight change in the behaviour of the mobs. As I engaged the Green group, in the far distance I saw Millhouse Manastorm and every single mob between the Red and Green groups aggroing towards me! I'm not sure if this is a bug or a new "mechanic" to prevent people from solo'ing but psh unless they nerf Feign Death everything is possible with time! I burst down the Earthshaper, sacrified my pet and feigned and slowly picked off the remaining enemies of the Green group, with Millhouse training mobs with him every single time.

The Red Group will cause some "issues" at first but is completely doable with a calm mind. CC the Berserker and a Warbringer and BURST THE HELL out of the Earth Shaper (if there is one, I forget). If there isn't one, BURST THE HELL out of  Millhouse until he's at 50% health. When he runs away, gauge if the mobs are all up in your face or re-cc'able and kill them off out of spite.

After these pulls, I camouflaged my way up to Slabhide and switched back to my Beast Mastery mode. I've never tried using a non-tank pet to fight Slabhide but I'm pretty sure it's doable. But then again with 25 pet slots at our disposal why WOULDN'T you have a tanking pet on you somewhere right? I engage per normal and just keep Mend Pet up on my Torby. As for myself, all I have to do is dodge fire and falling rocks and end up taking 0 damage for this fight anyways. Sometimes the pillars would LOS my pet (usually the time he takes the most damage) and I found that running INTO Slabhide, like the area right UP his ass gives me a good location to cast Mend Pet successfully. Two million hit points and running around like a crazy person later, Slabhide is dead and its up to the RNG gods to write the rest of the story.

Turby the Hunter

The Birth of Turby

Hello, my name is Turby of Turalyon. I am a troll hunter and ...this is getting really awkward and weird. Anyways, for those of you who are not familiar with Turby the Hunter, I made some appearances over at Kluptomentum but became over-Shadowed and forced into a corner by Truny's Warlocky Deeds.

Allow me to bring you back in time, to the Birth of Turby back in Q4 (December) of 2007. I shall retell this story in detail here:

A long long time ago and once upon this long long time ago a friend in real life asked me:

"Hey the new expansion for WOW came out you should check out the game!"

"Oh yeah, I saw that on the news didn't people get all crazy lineuppy, jeez! What is this game kinda like Warcraft 3?", I asked.

"Well yeah, but it's like an RPG and you can make your own character and stuff and kill things, its like adventuring IN THE MAPS that you played on in Warcraft! And with this expansion they are adding a new class called Death Knight I want to check it out so bad!"

"Ooh Death Knight, that sounds cool what do they do? (I had no idea what classes there were at this point)"

"Oh they use like blood and ice and diseases apparently, kinda like a Dragon Knight in Maplestory"

"Whoa that sounds crazy! How do I make one?"

"Apparently its lame you have to have a character at level 55 already to make one!"

"Oh what?! So if I start now what should I start with?"

"Hmm I don't know, you could make a Warlock our group needs one.. or a hunter, but I think we have one already"

"A what? CAN I HAVE A DOG?"

"LOL a dog? Well hunters can tame wolves, those are like dogs right?"

"OMG OK I'M MAKING A HUNTER!"

And so I created my very first hunter Turby with amorous prospects of one day "having a dog" and the allure of this so called "Death Knight" class. I started out Raptor Striking and Autoshooting. Petless. The game was quick to pick-up and my nooby beginnings in the Valley of Trials was so epic, the game became even ..epiccer as I learned how to right click my MAP to reveal the ENTIRETY of Azeroth. "WHOA how big can this place get?"

So why start a hunter blog NOW? Three years later? Uhh ..well, so like Blizzard totally gave us like TWENTY FIVE PET SLOTS hence each of my companions have many many wild and vivid stories to tell!

Why Beast Master?

Why NOT? Well, when I first learned about these so called Talent Trees at level 10 I asked my friend "what are these so called Exotic Pets?" are they like totally chill and lay on the beach in exotic locations all day and have exotic accents? I was then informed of a ferocious type of dinosaur called Devilsaurs that resided in a far far away place known as Un'goro Crater. I saw a picture of them and insantly I thought "MUST HAVE!" Level 60 was the new goal. Scrap the Death Knight idea!

Looking back at this story, the one thing I find interesting is that in my decision to choose my "spec" I didn't ask "which spec will produce the most DPS while fighting Nefarion?", but rather "which spec is coolest and most fun?". Heck, the concept of dungeons, raiding, stats, and gear weren't even on my mind at the very least until level 70. Ironically at that time Beast Master was one of the strongest specs, pve and pvp I believe. Anyone still remember the godliness that Bestial Wrath brought along with nimble fingers? You were immune to everything but damage! I learned to be aware and nimble all through PVP'ing on Turby the Hunter. I had a blast though and that's what really counts. My first Dungeon Proper was initiated from a random whisper asking if I wanted to do "Sunken Temple". I agreed and it was epic! At this time I still thought that you had to do all the Vanilla dungeons to obtain the "Jenkins" title. Yeah, nooby dooby right?

Turby is also my very single toon that embraced the quests in Outlands, actually reading the text and..well...DOING Outlands until level 68.

Ok now even I'm getting bored now....soo.....WELCOME!!

Turby the Hunter

Terrorpene

'Raawr!"

TERRORPENE

This is one beautiful turtle! Its onyx carapace simmers and seethes as if it were infused by the fires of Ragnaros himself, and its horn constantly bellows with a toxic smoke.

This was actually the very first rare pet that I tamed so he shall also be my very first entry!

LOCATION

Terrorpene resides in the lava pools just outside the Throne of Flame or Sulfuron Spire in the new Cataclysm region Mt. Hyjal. He tends to spawn in the eastern pools, right in the lava. If you are trying to tame him, don't get over excited and jump into the fire while trying to catch this beauty.

TAMING TIPS

Terrorpene is level 81 and I believe is the lowest level Cataclysm Region pet. However, don't underestimate Terrorpene's level this pet is actually one of the hardest hitting rare spawns out there. When you manage to find Terrorpene and start taming it, it will channel a flame-beam onto you that ticks for 10,000 damage a second! I highly recommend you using a Prismatic Elixir to raise your magical resistances by 90. The trick is, Terrorpene's flaming-beam is four-times weak to resistance mechanics so this elixir will essentially give you 360 resist against his attack, or halving his attack. When I tamed him at level 82 I only had 44,000 HP and had about 8,000 after the ordeal. The great thing about Terrorpene is that this flaming turtle is well, a turtle and hence is not an exotic pet and can be used in Marksmanship and Survival specs. Though from personal experience I only use him for his aesthetic appeal in Survival, and I use him to tank as a Beast Master as that is the spec that maximizes the potential of our pets.



"I can haz Anger!"



Turby the Hunter